Last week I flew to Boston for the day — to sample nine homebrewed beers.

That may sound extreme — enduring 20 hours of travel time to spend an hour or two judging a homebrew competition at the Samuel Adams Brewery — but it’s the fourth time I’ve done this. I’m a little crazy, true, but I’m also passionate about beer, and the Longshot competition is too much fun to miss.

Making beer at home

Curiously, when alcohol regained legality in the United States with the ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933, the new law legalized home winemaking but failed to do likewise for the homebrewing of beer. At the time it was blamed on a simple clerical error that left off the words “and beer” to the statute, but I’ve never been quite satisfied with that answer. If it was merely a typo, why did it take nearly 75 years to correct?

It wasn’t until 1978 that homebrewing was legalized once more when President Jimmy Carter signed HR 1337, which contained an amendment by then-California Sen. Alan Cranston that created a tax exemption for beer brewed at home for personal or family use.

But homebrewing was happening even before that. One of the first homebrew clubs — The Maltose Falcons — was founded in Los Angeles in 1974, and it’s still around today. That same year, Byron Burch published one of the earliest homebrewing books, “Quality Brewing.” Burch owns The Beverage People, a Santa Rosa homebrewing supply store, now. And Oakland’s Oak Barrel has been selling homebrew supplies since 1957. Oak Barrel owner Homer Smith is a local legend in the homebrewing community and has given numerous local professional brewers and brewery owners their start.

Homebrewing is almost like the minor leagues of brewing; most of the professionals running the nation’s 2,000-plus breweries these days began by brewing at home. Great homebrewers wind their way through homebrew competitions, gaining reputations for their beers and building a following, then turning pro. Ken Grossman, founder of California’s largest craft brewery, was an avid homebrewer and even owned a homebrewing supply store before launching Sierra Nevada.

Today, more people are homebrewing than ever before. The American Homebrewing Association in Boulder, Colo., reached a milestone this February when the 30,000th member joined. The association membership has tripled since 1990 and jumped 30 percent in the last two years alone — and those are just association members. The AHA estimates there may be as many as 1 million homebrewers in this country.

Starting in 1996, the Samuel Adams Longshot American Homebrew Contest offered homebrewers the chance to have their beer made and commercially sold by Samuel Adams — with their face on the bottle label. The idea was three winners’ beers would be bottled and sold in mixed six-packs, but it only took two years before the logistics and costs of running such a competition sank in, and the project was shelved.

A contest comeback

Boston Beer founder Jim Koch kept it in the back of his mind, though, and revived the idea, relaunching the contest in 2006 in the hopes that “it would be a springboard for aspiring brewers, bring attention to the quality of homebrewing and perhaps launch a career or two.”

In that, he succeeded. Don Oliver, whose Old Ale won in 2006, is now the brewer at Turlock’s Dust Bowl Brewing. Two more notable Bay Area homebrewers have won as well: Clayton’s Mike McDole won in 2007 for his Imperial IPA recipe, inspired by Russian River’s Pliny the Elder — though it wasn’t made until the following year, due to a hops shortage — and Alex Drobshoff of Livermore won for his Bock in 2008.

Two winners are declared each year, and the six-pack is rounded out by a third winner, who is a Samuel Adams employee. The Boston Beer Co., which makes Samuel Adams beer, encourages its employees to homebrew and then runs its own in-house contest.

Which brings us to last week’s nine.

Earlier this year, regional homebrew competitions were held in Oakland, Chicago and Boston to choose three semifinalists each, from around 800 entries. Those nine beers were a diverse bunch: They included a doppelbock, Flanders red ale, German pilsner, imperial IPA, lambic, rauchbier, Russian imperial stout, saison and an American wheat ale, flavored with hibiscus flowers and entered in the spice and herb beer category.

The four finalists included James Schirmer from Bellflower, a suburb of Los Angeles, as well as Zack Adams from Connecticut, Tom Fitzpatrick from Illinois and Brian St. Clair from Ohio. They’ll be flown to the Great American Beer Festival in October, where the two winners will be announced.

All nine beers were good — really good. All nine easily could have been mistaken for commercially brewed beers, and that’s the state of homebrewing today. Many of the best homebrewers rival the pros. It’s a hobby that people take very seriously, and it shows in the results.

It was tough choosing the best among them. It’s even tougher knowing the winners and not being able to reveal them. But in a few months, you’ll be able to buy a six-pack and sample them for yourself. Until then, you may be able to find last year’s Longshot winners on store shelves. Or you could just brew your own at home. Maybe next year, you’ll be a Longshot.